Thursday, January 27, 2011

Book Review: She's So Dead To Us

I'll give Keiran Scott this, I foundShe's So Dead to Us an entertaining read from beginning to end despite the fact that absolutely nothing about the story or characters resonated with me. Based on the cover I was expecting some kind of high society story.* Instead this is an OC-style teen drama, and spoiler alert, no HEA. Presumably to keep the the drama going for sequels in an on-going soap opera-like series.

Basically, Ally's Dad was managing the money of several other upper-crust suburban families and he lost it. dad went AWOL and the family moved away for a while and came back in much reduced circumstances. So Ally goes from being a sporty-princess insider of the rich kids at school, to a bit of an outsider. I didn't like Ally, or her friends, of the love interest. I didn't like how they were all gorgeous, talented and totally self-involved and if the story had ended with the bunch of them driving of a cliff I could have lived with that. The only characters I kind of liked were the to not-so-wealthy kids who befriend Ally and whom she treats as essentially disposable.

So, why did I enjoy reading this book? Because despite being *so* not the target demographic, this book is well-written. The alternative first person between Ally and her love interest show them as have just enough insight into their screwed up personalities to be redeemable, and they just occasionally do the right thing. the minutiae of high school drama provides a lot of believable twists, turns and reversals. Each chapter opens with an anonymous gossipy conversation that perfectly elicits that adolescent feeling that an invisible audience is always watching and judging what you do.

However by the end it is clear the characters aren't really going to grow, the couple won't discover some kind of true love, the number of plot points resolved with be outnumbered by the number of new plot points introduced, and the drama with just churn endlessly on. So, interesting place to visit--but I doubt I'll be back soon.

This review is based on a publisher donated review copy.
* No character in this story would ever wear pearls. Just saying. The cover is way of base for a fashion-conscious, rather sports-focused, modern wealthy-teen drama.